CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Former Massey Energy coal group president Chris Blanchard was accused of “playing engineer” with safety issues by former Massey CEO Don Blankenship in a Feb. 2008 memo shown to the jury hearing the Blankenship federal criminal trial Thursday afternoon.
Blanchard, who was president of Massey’s Marfork Coal Group and Performance Coal that managed the Upper Big Branch mine in Raleigh County, represents the closest link so far in the federal government’s conspiracy case against Blankenship in the three-week-old trial.
In testimony that lasted nearly four hours, Blanchard described Blankenship as a “micro-manager” and someone who was “very detailed oriented.” He told the jury Blankenship was sent 68 production reports a day from UBB including reports every half-hour on the progress of the lucrative longwall mining technique. The mine was making $600,000 a day at full production, Blanchard said.
Blankenship is charged with violating mine safety laws at UBB in favor of production and then lying to regulators about the company’s safety record following the April 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners.
Federal prosecutors presented more than a dozen production reports and memos between Blanchard and Blankenship. Most included handwritten responses by Blankenship. The last one shown the jury Thursday, a memo from Blankenship dated Feb. 11, 2008, in which he was criticizing Blanchard for spending time on engineering ventilation changes at UBB.
“UBB could be a lot better than it is…All of you engineers think that planning for ventilation in the year 2015 is more important than the survival of today, and believe me it’s not. We’ll worry about ventilation or other issues at an appropriate time. Now is not the time,” the memo said.
The memo was written at the same time the mine was on the federal mine safety Potential Pattern of Violations (PPOV) list.
Blanchard, who is expected back on the stand for more questions from prosecutors when the trial resumes Friday morning, testified he understood the memo to mean “run more coal” and spend less time on other things.
One of the charges against Blankenship accuses conspiracy in the advance notice of mining crews when mine inspectors arrived at UBB. Blanchard told the jury that in the summer of 2009 he had to cancel a meeting with Blankenship because inspectors had come to the mine. When he called Blankenship to tell him, he testified Blankenship said, “Did the crews know they were coming?”
Blanchard has never been charged in connection with the UBB investigation. He’s been mentioned a lot in the trial. Former UBB miners testified he would travel to the mine face and order production to continue even when there were problems. He testified Thursday that with salary and bonuses he made more than $400,000 a year. He said his pay was never cut for UBB’s safety violations and fines. He said the thought was it was cheaper to pay the fines that fix the problems.
On Thursday morning, Blanchard’s former executive assistant Lisa Williams became the 20th prosecution witness to take the stand.
Part of Williams’ job, as Blanchard’s executive assistant in the years prior to Apr. 2010, was to forward production reports from the 14 mines plus prep plants that made up the Marfork/Performance Coal group to Blanchard and others in upper Massey management, including Blankenship.
According to Williams, the production report for the UBB longwall was the only one she had to provide every 30 minutes. All other production reports were forwarded on two hour intervals or three times daily, depending on the mine.
The information included in those 30 minute UBB reports covered start times, shearer locations, direction and whether the longwall was running.
If the UBB report was not provided on schedule, Williams testified she would get a call from Sandra Davis, Blankenship’s assistant, “every time” asking for the production numbers.
At one point, Williams sent an e-mail to a dispatcher at UBB asking him to fill out the production report in a different way so she could forward the reports quicker without as many changes. She said Blankenship was particular about the layout of those reports, down to the font and gridlines. He wanted no gridlines.
Under cross examination, Eric Delinsky, one of Blankenship’s attorneys, revisited the calls Williams testified Blankenship made “several times a day” to Blanchard and attempted to make the point, through questioning, that Blanchard could have been talking about any of the Marfork mines, Massey’s largest group, on the calls with Blankenship — not just UBB.
Of Blankenship, Delinsky asked Williams, “He was a tough SOB, right?”
“It was business,” Williams answered.
Later, Booth Goodwin, U.S. Attorney for West Virginia’s Southern District, asked Williams if, even with all the other Massey mines, including those in the Marfork group and beyond, Blankenship seemed particularly focused on what was coming out of UBB.
“Yes, he was focused,” Williams said. “That’s why I did 30 minute reports.”
Another memo introduced into evidence during testimony from Williams showed 17 Massey contractors were scheduled to be cut from the payroll at UBB less than three weeks before the mine explosion.
Earlier on Thursday, Scott Halstead, a former UBB fire boss, returned to the witness stand. On Wednesday, he’d testified that he saw Blankenship at UBB in the early 2000s. The defense attempted to muddy the water a bit under cross examination by pointing out how much different the mine looked almost a decade later.
Halstead, though, maintained he had prepared a section of the longwall before Blankenship’s arrival, contradicting an earlier defense claim that Blankenship had “never been in UBB.”
That longwall was later moved to another mine but returned to UBB in 2009.
Thursday was the 11th day for testimony in the trial that began on Oct. 1 with jury selection in front of U.S. District Judge Irene Berger.